


The world is a looking-glass

by middlemarch



Category: Downton Abbey, Sense and Sensibility - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Chaplain, Crossover, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Vanity Fair - Freeform, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 17:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15934988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Trauma rends. What repairs?





	The world is a looking-glass

“There was a chaplain with us, Ferrars. A good fellow, earnest but practical. Used to talk about a library he had at home,” Matthew said. Mary knew she could not ask very much, or Matthew would stop talking. It was always this way when he spoke about the War—it was always at night, very late or very early. If he broke off, she knew to lay a hand over his heart and to wait for him to cover it with his own. If he wept, which was rare enough, she knew enough to kiss away the first tears and to call him by his name _Matthew_ , without any other endearment. 

“What about the library?” she said. That was safe to say and he relaxed. She could feel it in his breath and the tone of his voice.

“He said it was full of places to hide, books he’d never yet read but wanted to. That it was just as it should be,” Matthew replied. 

“You liked that,” Mary said, making the assumption tolerable by kissing the bit of him closest to her—his bare shoulder, the skin unmarred. He sighed and she kissed him a second time, tasting him and waiting for the catch in his voice.

“Yes. He reminded me, us, of home. Of England, the England we fought for. Of a future, where someone might sit in a library and read _Vanity Fair_ ,” Matthew said.

“Surely he’d read _Vanity Fair_ , darling,” Mary said. “He was a chaplain, he must’ve done.”

“You must be right,” Matthew said but he didn’t sound distressed the way he might have. He rolled over to face her.

“He had a wife waiting for him. In Devon. He told me once when he saw a white flower, any white flower, it reminded him of her,” Matthew said.

“A romantic chaplain, then,” Mary said softly. Edith would never believe it of her.

“I suppose. It didn’t seem romantic, when he said it,” Matthew replied.

“No?”

“It seemed like the one truth that kept him alive in a living Hell,” Matthew said. 

“He loved her very much,” Mary said.

“He did. I hope he still does,” Matthew said, reaching to brush back Mary’s loose hair from her face, grazing her cheek. His blue eyes were in shadow, like the far side of the moon.

“What happened to him?” Mary asked.

“I hope he went home. To his Elinor in Devon, his vicarage. He was gone one day and one knew not to ask,” Matthew said.

“You’re home, Matthew. You’re home with me right now at Downton,” Mary said. She shifted so she could wrap her arms around him, draw him close. He was warm and she’d keep him so.

“You’re a white flower, Mary. A rose, the heart of a white rose,” Matthew murmured until she stopped his lips with her own. A path beckoned, a dark path, and she would not let him take it. Elinor Ferrars, white as a lily, tired, patient with a man who shook at the beat of a pigeon’s wings, somewhere in Devon, Elinor Ferrars would understand.

**Author's Note:**

> Recently watched the 2008 BBC Sense and Sensibility with Dan Stevens, couldn't resist crossing Dan over with himself. Title from Vanity Fair.


End file.
